Local health unit to become part of mega-board

The local health unit will be absorbed into a mega-health region that would include Ottawa and most of Eastern Ontario under a plan unveiled by the provincial government this week.

Local board member Doug Struthers said the regional board would cover a massive area stretching from Kingston to the Quebec border, including Leeds and Grenville, Lanark, Prescott-Russell, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Renfrew, Lennox and Addington, Frontenac, Kingston and Cornwall, according to information that the unit received from the government.

In all, the board would serve 1.6 million people across about 30,000 square kilometres.

Although the local health unit had proposed to the province that it be amalgamated with two neighbouring units with similar rural challenges, Struthers said the government presented the mega-board as a done deal.

Local MPP Steve Clark, however, insisted that the government’s merger plans are only proposals and that it will discuss the borders with municipalities and health units beforehand.

“While the government will bring forward proposals, it’s important to stress the specific boundaries have not been finalized,” Clark said in an emailed statement.

“There will be a consultation process involving public health units and municipalities. There are many discussions yet to happen and I look forward to hearing from our local health unit and municipal partners about designing a governance and delivery model that will protect and preserve the voice of all municipalities.”

Struthers said he has many concerns about the creation of an “incredibly large board,” particularly about its ability to maintain health services in rural areas.

The current board has a “significant understanding” of the public health needs of its residents and Struthers wondered how a mega-board could provide the same services.

While “health needs are health needs,” Struthers said the challenges of delivering services to rural Ontario are different from doing so to downtown Ottawa.

In Leeds and Grenville, for example, the sparse, far-flung population leads to transportation issues, employment problems and different mental-health issues, he said.

“Being associated with a big city like Ottawa would not be in our best interests, nor would they be in the best interests of Ottawa,” he said.

Struthers said that the provincial government has not said how the mega-board would be governed nor how much municipalities will have to pay to support it.

When the provincial government announced a month ago that it was merging the 35 Ontario health units into 10, Dr. Paula Stewart, medical officer of health, said the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark unit should be pro-active by working with the government to propose its own merger solution. The strategy was to offer the idea of joining with neighbouring rural boards with a similar urban-rural mix, she said.

Stewart and her board feared that it might be lumped in with Ottawa.

The government’s downloading of public health costs is much heavier on big cities than rural municipalities. The government is changing programs that were funded on a 75-per-cent provincial, 25-per-cent municipal split to a 70/30 cost-sharing.

Other programs that the provincial government used to fund 100 per cent because they are part of provincewide directives will now be bankrolled by the same 70/30 split.

But the downloading is worse for big cities, which would have to pay 40 per cent of costs. The local unit feared that it, too, would be hit with the higher downloading if it was merged with Ottawa.

Struthers said confusion abounds around the government’s proposals. It hasn’t said how the boards will be governed or whether all municipalities would have a say on how their tax dollars are spent, he said.